


Mechanical

by SirAlahn



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Angst, Asexual Character, Asexual!Balfour, Bullying, Canonical Character Death, Homoromantic!Balfour, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV First Person, POV Multiple, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queerplatonic Relationships, Serial Killer!Ivory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 16:56:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4312968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirAlahn/pseuds/SirAlahn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one ever thought Balfour Vallet would become an Airman, least of all himself. Not when the boots he has to fill are Amery's, and every moment is a reminder that he will never be a replacement for his brother. But dragons don't choose their riders based on who they're not. [New chapters added as completed.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. BALFOUR

BALFOUR

I wasn’t my brother. 

That fact had always seemed a disappointment to the people around me—whether they be my parents, my teachers, or my friends. Of the two of us, Amery burned the brighter: a vibrant star whose own brilliance leeched all traces of radiance from the dimmer ones around it. He hurt to look at sometimes, because seeing the hard line of his jaw or the deep blue of his eyes only served to remind me of what I was not. 

He did not treat me cruelly, though I’m sure sometimes he wanted to. Yet his own standards for himself would not allow Amery to do such a thing; raised as the inheriting scion of a noble Volstovic line, his duties were to serve the people of our great nation. Once he joined the Dragon Corps, that drive in him only deepened. And since it had become quite clear early in our childhood that I was the weaker of the two of us, he couldn’t seem to justify the harshness I could sometimes see lurking behind the muscle that twitched in his jaw when he was angry. 

But he did treat me gruffly. Not until I had the opportunity to see him with the other airmen did I truly understand just how much he softened his actions for me. Too young to know better just yet, I made the mistake of blundering into the Airman’s common room while my parents met with the Chief Sergeant. Only later would I come to think of him as “Sergeant Adamo”. At the time, the thought of being an airman seemed a dream as distant as the stars themselves. 

Though there were not that many years between us, Amery had become a man while I still lagged behind in the gangly awkwardness of a child. My brother might still keep himself clean-shaven, but the last soft edges of youth had given way to the chiseled hardness of someone grown. So much so that I barely recognized him when I mistakenly pushed open the door to the common room. All that I could see was a group of men whose appearances set something to fluttering deep in my chest, stealing my breath like I’d just been struck by one of their mighty mechanical dragons. 

Three of the five were grouped loosely around a piano, the windows open to let in the late spring breeze, or maybe to let out the liquid notes currently flowing from the piano. A narrow, incredibly pale young man about my brother’s age sat at the piano, his nimble hands shuffling quickly over the keys with the assurance of long practice. Next to him, seated on the other end of the bench but not touching the piano, sat a man with the sandy brown hair of my brother. 

Muscles had thickened along his shoulders and upper back, making it clear that he had already begun to hone himself for the life he now lived. While Amery was not the biggest man in the room, he certainly wasn’t the smallest either. That… honor… was my own to claim, though I doubt anyone in that room, myself included, would have considered me a man by any stretch of the imagination. 

My brother and the other man at the piano were the last to notice my presence. Frozen in place with the sudden realization that these men would now likely give me a sound beating, and for no reason I could really fault them for, I couldn’t even process the features of the airmen seated away from the instrument. With all the melodrama of a badly written roman, I could only focus on the pale, cool gaze that suddenly swung my way as the music ceased, interrupted, a few notes trickling away into silence as the player ceased his song. 

Half a heartbeat later, my brother looked up to see what had interrupted his companion. The frown twisting his mouth was angrier than I had ever seen Amery be over something apparently so trivial. Yet the emotion that replaced it a moment later hurt me even more. 

Shame burned in blue eyes darker than my own, and Amery rose so quickly that, unbidden, I took a step back. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

“What are you doing here, Balfour?” Amery’s voice had shifted into a low growl that demanded a suitable explanation. The hard, flinty look on his face, however, stole whatever semblance of a voice I might have still had. Feeling very much like I might never speak again, I struggled between making coherent sound and the impulse to simply dart back out of the room. 

Behind Amery, another of the airmen had stood from his seat on a long couch. “Who’s this, Amery?” He _was_ the largest man in the room, tall and robust with the tracing of a beard along his jaw, wheat-gold hair pulled back casually. A teasing smile curved his mouth, flashing his broad white teeth. “You have a thing for young scrawny boys that you haven’t told us about?” 

“Fuck off, Magoughin.” Amery’s eyes cut away from me for a moment—thankfully—as he glared at the blond man. “He’s my brother.” 

“You never told us you had a brother!” This particular voice belonged to a younger man with curly dark hair and a roman propped on one of his knees. “What possible reason could you have for secreting such a person away from us, Amery? Afraid that we’ll corrupt him and your good family name?” 

I could tell that my brother’s temper was already wearing thin. “No. It just… wasn’t important.” Looking back at me again, Amery fixed me with a look that left no doubt to the fact he was exasperated to see me. The muscle along his jaw twitched with obvious annoyance. “Answer the question, Balfour.” 

At last, the words stuck in my throat broke free, unstoppable, like a mass of logs smashing through a snag in a flooded river. “Mother and Father brought me. They’re talking to the Chief Sergeant—”

“Fuck.” I’d never seen Amery angry at the mention of our parents before. They had always enjoyed a rather tranquil relationship, Amery’s achievements earning their pride since we were children. Unlike some of our cousins, my brother had entirely skipped the rebellious stage that normally started a civil war inside a household like our own. Never one to crave the crass adventures of the lower class, he had been dutiful in devoting his time to the things that would improve his mind and his body. 

The impression I had of him then only goes to prove that I never really knew my brother at all. 

“Why are they here?” A different intensity suffused his voice now, everyone else in the room forgotten but for a reason that no longer had anything to do with my presence. Amery’s eyes burned into me. “They didn’t even bother to send a letter…”

“I’m not sure.” Embarrassed, I wished achingly that I had a better answer to give him. “They dismissed me from the room before the conversation began.”

“And you thought it would be entertaining to wander around the Airman?” Head tilted to one side, the curly-haired man on the couch closed his book in delight. Though not before he bothered to mark his place with a strip of silk ribbon. “You aren’t as much of a shrinking violet as you look, hm? Or you’ve been hit in the head one time too many. Which is it, Amery? Is your charming brother hiding a metal spine, or is he unfortunately stupid?”

These words ignited a deep blush in my cheeks, and summoned a gale of laughter from the man my brother had called Magoughin. “Keep talking like that, Raphael, and a body might begin to wonder if you’re the cindy one.”

Raphael’s smile looked cheery, but a razor edge lurked in his voice. “Don’t sound so desperately hopeful, Magoughin. I’m sure you’ll find a nice lad to warm your bed one of these days.” 

Previously silent, a dusky-skinned man in an armchair stirred as Magoughin scowled darkly. “Amery, perhaps you should intercept your parents.” Black hair glossy and loose, it snaked over his shoulders as he straightened. The angle of his nose and narrow face made him look distinctly Ramanthine, and I could hear a few alien syllables in his soft words. “Whatever their conversation, it seems you should be present.”

My brother swore in a long string of curses that I had never heard him utter before. Quickly crossing the distance between us, Amery set a heavy hand on my shoulder and made to steer me back out of the room. No doubt wishing to limit the contact between myself and his fellow airmen. Before his bulk blocked my view of the room, I caught one more glimpse of the others we were leaving behind. Particularly the pale man at the piano that hadn’t spoken a single word since my arrival. He was watching my brother with eyes of such a pale grey they seemed almost white, his hair similarly lacking in color—so much so that I might have mistaken him for an albino if not for his eyes. 

His attention only strayed to me for a moment, that icy gaze drilling straight into my soul before he turned away again. As Amery shut the door, the sound of piano keys resumed the earlier song from where I had interrupted it, as though neither I nor Amery had ever been present at all. 

 

We remained silent as we made our way down the hall, Amery’s mood heavy and foreboding whilst I tried to will myself invisible. His hand didn’t move from my shoulder, as though he thought that I might run for somewhere else in the Airman. But with my heart thrumming in my chest and my legs awkwardly disobedient, I didn’t think I could have done so even if I wanted to. I had no idea now what had possessed me to wander into the common room, and felt sure that if Amery had not been there, I would have suffered more than gentle teasing. None of the men seemed the sort that would like having an intruder in their midst, disturbing their privacy and whatever routines they lived by. Least of all the peculiarly pale man that my brother had been seated next to. 

Some part of me wanted to ask Amery his name. Yet that tiny curious voice was drowned out by the greater clangor of my self-preservation. 

Ultimately, we exchanged no words between when we left the Airman’s common room and when we arrived at the room where our parents were meeting with the Chief Sergeant. Amery’s brows were drawn down; he didn’t so much as look at me as he deposited me outside the door. “Stay here.” Ducking my head, I murmured, “Yes, sir,” but I don’t believe he heard me. Either that, or he was simply to cross to acknowledge me. Nor to understand the mysterious shift he had just made between my brother and a superior. I had never called him “sir” before, only by his name. But I saw much of our father in him now, and felt the final severance of whatever connection we had once possessed as siblings.

Amery knocked on the door sharply, purposefully. Only then did I realize that a faint murmur of voices had been audible, since the sudden absence of them heightened the silence in the hallway. After a moment, I heard the Chief Sergeant call out gruffly: “Whatever it is, make it quick!” 

My brother disappeared into the room, and the voices resumed. No doubt our parents were greeting Amery, or he was explaining my transgression to the Sergeant. I was thankful I couldn’t make out the words, since it saved me from having to block them out. 

There were no chairs in this section of the hallway. A few years ago I might have sat on the floor, but at this juncture I had no interest in being seen as even more of a child. Thrusting my hands into my pockets, I leaned against the wall and toyed with the smooth pebbles I’d fished out of my mother’s garden. They weren’t anything special, but their cool texture gave me something else to focus on besides my own embarrassment. 

Part of me wished that the other airmen would show themselves—especially the narrow-bodied man that had been playing the piano. I couldn’t place what about him fascinated me so, and even more than that I was reluctant to examine the feeling too closely. But he didn’t show himself, nor could I hear any music no matter how hard I strained my ears. All at once, I felt both disappointed and relieved. 

So I lost myself in running my fingertips over the pebbles in my pockets, squeezing them until the heat from my skin seeped into the cool stones. I’d found a groove in one of them, and ran my thumbnail over it. 

Absorbed in this mindless stimulus, eyes directed sightlessly at the tile floor, I didn’t hear the door open. A shadow falling across my vision alerted me to the presence of another person. Looking up, I expected to see my parents, or Amery. Instead, the strong-jawed face of the Chief Sergeant regarded me with an expression I couldn’t read. His inscrutability unnerved me; this was a man I could not help but respect: and surely by now he had heard of my misguided adventure inside the Airman. Though I blushed hotly to imagine the reprimand he might be about to deliver, I didn’t shy away from eye contact with him as I might have with anyone else. 

I didn’t want him to think me a coward. 

“I suppose you were trying to get a glimpse of a dragon.” 

Much to my surprise, I thought I detected a hint of amusement in his tone. But I must have imagined it, for it didn’t show on his face. Thumbnail still rubbing over the groove in the stone, I shook my head. “No, sir.” Surprisingly, my voice didn’t shake even though it was soft. Somehow, I knew he would be disappointed if I answered yes, and even more disappointed if I lied. Thankfully, truly—“I was just… looking for my brother.”

The Chief Sergeant studied me at length, his grey eyes just as unrevealing as his face. Having given my answer, I found I couldn’t bear to look at him anymore. The thought of having to stare into those intense, quiet eyes made my skin crawl, so I fastened my gaze back on the floor. Hopefully he would not take it amiss. 

“It’s a good thing you found him,” he said at last, and crossed his arms over his broad chest as he leaned against the wall next to me. “The other boys might not have taken so kindly to finding you wandering around by yourself.” 

“Amery didn’t seem very pleased.” At hearing my own voice, I winced. My words sounded sullen, almost petulant. And, perhaps, hurt. 

Squirming some, I desperately wished he would look away from me. And finally he did, watching a patch of sunlight coming through one of the windows as it illuminated a few dust motes swirling in the air. “You look up to him.” Direct, a statement rather than a question. 

“I did. I do.” Quickly, to explain, I added, “He seems very different now. I’m sorry I went looking for him. I embarrassed him in front of his friends.”

This startled a laugh from the Chief Sergeant. Yet even as I glanced at him in confusion, I could not understand why. He sobered quickly, words slow and measured. “I didn’t mean for that to sound how it did.” Unfortunately, he didn’t explain _how_ it was supposed to sound, but I was used to that from other people. Their emotions and motives almost always remained mysterious to me, and I had stopped asking. Explaining it seemed like such a nuisance when I did. After another pause, he asked, “Are the two of you close?”

“Not really.” My own honesty made a thick, bitter lump rise in my throat. Wasn’t that just the truth of things? I had looked up to Amery all my life, and craved his approval almost more than that of our father or mother. Yet I had never done anything that seemed to make him care about me one way or the other. I was simply a piece of scenery on the stage of his life, and I couldn’t even blame him for it. Neither did I petulantly resent him. Instead I simply felt sad and a little hollow, like I’d put a pin to a balloon buoying up that dream. “I think there are too many years between us for that.”

Nodding, my peculiar companion mused on that for a moment. Behind us, the faint murmur of voices continued. “Have your parents considered presenting you if th’Esar commissions another dragon?” 

“I doubt it.” Being an airman had never been my dream, but Amery’s. Even so, I felt saddened that I would never know what it was like to ride dragon-back over Thremedon. “With Amery serving as an airman, I’m going to be groomed to inherit. My father will probably want me to go into taxes and finance.” That was his position, and the occupation that had won my grandfather similar wealth and recognition. Surely he would expect me to follow in those same footsteps. I had a fair head for numbers, but the application of it seemed to me very boring. 

“Ah.” Like me, the Sergeant didn’t seem to know what to add after that. Most people, I had found, were unnerved by silence—and moved to fill it. Yet as the silent seconds stretched onward between us, they were not awkward as I had feared they would be. I wouldn’t dare call it a companionable silence, but it was, at least… comfortable. The Chief Sergeant seemed as pleased as I was that neither of us felt the need to prattle about something trivial. 

I lost track of how many minutes passed, as I had no reliable way to count them. But the patch of sunlight the Sergeant and I both watched had moved across several tiles by the time that Amery emerged from the room once more. Inclining his head to his superior, he said, “I apologize for taking your time, Sergeant Adamo. My parents were very insistent upon knowing how I have been.” Amery said these last few words quietly, as though to mask them from the very people he was speaking about. 

Our mother and father exited behind him, and though they didn’t look expressly unhappy, I could tell that something was troubling them. Stepping over to join them as usual, I missed whatever hushed exchange passed between the Chief Sergeant and my brother. But I did notice Amery bow once to my parents and then turn to walk away without so much as a goodbye. 

He hadn’t looked at me either. That I hadn’t expected him to hurt almost as badly as the knowledge that he hadn’t. 

“I hope your meeting was informative.” Somehow, I doubted that the Chief Sergeant meant that entirely in earnest. He shook hands with my father, and bowed mechanically to my mother in such a way that made me think the niceties of polite society were not something he was entirely comfortable with. 

“Ye-es.” My father’s mouth had turned down into an absent frown beneath his moustache, indicating that he was thinking something over even as he spoke. “Thank you for meeting with us.” 

Sergeant Adamo simply nodded, apparently judging the matter closed, and saw us out of the Airman. My parents didn’t speak to me as we stepped up into the carriage that would take us home. All the way back to the house, I expected them to reprimand me for wandering unsupervised through the Airman. Yet neither of them so much as mentioned it, evidently lost in their thoughts. Eventually comfortable with the silence, I made no move to disturb them. 

I had enough things of my own to ponder about as we sat absently through dinner and retired early for the evening. As I lay in my bed, discomforted and unable to fall asleep, I couldn’t banish the visions of my brother, of the pale man at the piano, of the Chief Sergeant and his grey eyes. I kept getting the feeling that each of them expected something different from me, and I had no idea how to satisfy any of them, nor if I should even bother trying. 

I did not think that I would be seeing much of any of them anymore. It wasn’t as though I had any business at the Airman.


	2. IVORY

IVORY

Numbness was not an alien feeling. But numbness after an air raid was something I had never experienced before. Ever since the day that Cassiopeia had deigned to allow me to fly her for the first time, the act of piloting her made my heart stammer in a way that only cruelty had done so before. This became even more true when Adamo finally let us out on a real raid; the first time my beautiful queen opened her mouth at my bidding and spewed fire down onto the screaming Ke-Han, I felt a pleasure so intense that for a long throbbing moment I’d thought I had cum.

She would never have forgiven me if I’d made a mess on her back, but though I brought myself to a rough and hasty completion in the shower once we had returned to Thremedon, I had never actually done so in her saddle. 

This time, I couldn’t seem to summon any feeling at all. Even after we’d all made our reports and Adamo had dismissed us, the hollow sensation behind my breastbone refused to go away. I’d been reluctant to leave Cassiopeia’s side when we’d returned, standing trembling at her shoulder with one soot-smudged hand pressed against the warm metal of her scales. Normally she would never have suffered such a blemish upon her, even if her handlers were sure to polish it away soon even if I did not. But my beautiful queen seemed to sense that I was not myself. 

Which was entirely the problem. I was so much not myself that I hadn’t even showered yet. With my goggles pushed up into my hair, I remained surrounded by the thick stink of dragometal and fire, of ash and oil and sulphur, of burning flesh as my Cassiopeia immolated the Ke-Han below us. 

Awaking with a start from the memory, one of my dark hands clanged down on the piano keys in a dissonant cord. The Ke-Han were below us no longer—I was in the common room after all, the piano bench solid beneath me and the instrument itself glittering in the moonlight coming in through the windows. Which meant that Amery wasn’t here anymore. I closed my eyes to try to shut out the image of him falling from Anastasia’s back, but the damning vision followed behind my eyelids. 

It seemed utterly ridiculous that we could do nothing to save him. I could rationalize it however I liked: Anastasia should have caught him; we should have finished burning the Ke-Han outpost and then landed to retrieve him; I should have gone down myself to save him—it wasn’t as though I had any shortage of knives even under my leather riding gear. Yet no matter what logic I turned over and over in my mind, I knew the truth of things. The greater logic, the greater advantage of Volstov’s dragons, was not something we could give up even for a fallen comrade. We’d all seen that haunted expression in Adamo’s eyes when we returned: the knowledge that we might have been able to save Amery, but not without risking our girls. 

It was the one thing we could not do—the one thing we were absolutely forbidden from doing. 

Another screeching, keening cry rumbled up through the Airman from the hangar below, causing me to twitch and hit the dissonant keys again. 

The unbearable cacophony of Anastasia’s mournful bellowing ultimately moved me to pick out a real tune on the piano. My fingers, uncharacteristically clumsy, tripped over a few melodies before my muscle memory chose one for me. A ghostly melody, lyrical and chilling, yearning and nostalgic. It was old, a peculiar blend of Ramanthine and Volstovic influences that had been popular during a period when Volstov romanticized the Ramanthine past of the region. Yet it had been one of Amery’s favorites. 

I repeated the first few bars before working my feet against the pedals to amplify or mute the volume as certain passages had demanded. The fortissimo sections vibrated the very floor beneath me, doing battle with Anastasia’s cries or perhaps trying to join them. I had no doubt that the other airmen could hear it clearly throughout the building, but anyone short of Adamo who came complaining would have to answer to the hollowness in my chest and the aching in my hands that longed for my knives instead of music. 

I did not expect any of them to disturb me. 

Having lost myself in the melody, I didn’t hear Raphael’s footsteps until a prickling on the delicate hairs of my nape alerted me that someone was watching me from the doorway. I have never been prone to flights of fancy, but on this night I entertained the thought that the shadow in the doorway was Amery. That some warped hallucination was all his death had been, a product of some disease within the soft whorls of my brain. I felt at war with it sometimes, striving futilely against the inevitability of madness. My memories had always been suspect. Eventually I knew I wouldn’t be able to trust them at all.

Yet though I had seen ghosts before, Amery’s face was not the one that greeted me when I turned at the end of the song. Moonlight coiled through Raphael’s dark curls, casting his face into an anemic alabaster. His features denied me the impression that my own reflection was staring back at me. Raphael’s hair and eyes were far too dark to be mine. 

Wordless at first, he approached me through the bars of silver light slanting on the floor. He smelled very slightly of soap, clean as though the air raid had never happened. Almost, but not quite. The soot caked on my skin denied that reality, and I could ground myself by rubbing some of the ash between my fingertips. Over the scent of char and fuel, it became apparent that Raphael had worked some kind of light floral scent into his still-damp hair. Lilac, I thought. 

Raphael was the only one of the airmen I could imagine using such a scent and not being called a cindy for it.

I liked the combination of smells: and took another breath to catch the mingled notes of soot, of soap, of lilac. It would make a good perfume, a peculiar pheromone that would attract people like me. If I had ever desired such a thing. 

“You haven’t showered yet.” Not an order or a reprimand, but an observation. A statement of truth. Of inarguable reality. At least this time.

“I don’t want to forget what is real.” A few notes escaped my fingertips as I watched the light on the gold-leafed name stamped above the key cover. “I dislike when my memories disappear down the drain with the ash.”

Out of my peripheral vision, I saw Raphael glance toward the door. When a few breaths passed with no other signs of life, he slid his careful fingers along my temple and removed my grimy goggles. Muddied with sweat along my hairline, a few strands of tarnished silver clung to my skin. Raphael swept those back as well, undaunted by the dirt even though he had just showered. As they always did when he touched my scalp, my eyes drifted closed under his ministrations. His fingers worked over the skin that still tingled from the raid, slowly working their way down the back of my skull to the tight muscles in my neck. Firm without being painful, Raphael kneaded out the tension. 

When he reached my shoulders, he broke the silence between us. “I won’t let you forget.” One of his hands slid to my jaw. Attuned to the familiarity of the cue, I tilted my head up so that he could claim the soft kiss he wanted. “You can ask me to tell you what is real whenever you want.”

I had never believed or trusted anyone else to do that for me. But I trusted Raphael. 

He kissed me again and then drew back. “Would you feel better if we took a shower together?”

“Yes.”

Taking my hand, he led me away from the piano.


	3. BALFOUR

BALFOUR

The next time I saw the Chief Sergeant, I was sixteen instead of twelve. The years folded in on themselves until I could scarcely tell one from another, like pages fused together in the rain; all I knew was that somewhere in the mess, I’d hit a growth spurt. I might never be as imposing or graceful as Amery, but at the very least I no longer felt so much like a child. Even my parents no longer thought of me so much as helpless, though I was sure they would always worry more for me than Amery since I was their youngest.

Since that day in the Airman, I hadn’t seen my brother—and after a time, that seemed normal as well. Occasionally we would hear news about the airmen, including the scandal that was Havemercy the year I turned fourteen. Her choosing a Mollyrat handler had astounded everyone, and from what I’d heard the Chief Sergeant had a troublesome time with the airmen long before Rook ever set foot in the hangar. Sometimes I wondered what made each individual dragon choose who they had. There seemed little in common among the airmen other than their bravery. But as different as they were in every other trait, I couldn’t quite believe that was the only thing that interested the dragons. 

As I grew older, I pondered such things less and less. With my time consumed studying so that eventually I could attend the 'Versity and follow in my father’s footsteps into business and law, it seemed foolish to entertain such fancies. My destiny had already been set for me, and there would be no grand adventure as there was for Amery. I had more than enough reading to do without complicating my schedule thinking about subjects that concerned me not at all. 

I thought of the airmen themselves even more rarely. As my parents began to reach out to other noble Volstovic families in the interest of securing a betrothal before I hit my majority, the image of the pale man at the piano steadily faded from my mind. He might as well have been a ghost. I didn’t even know his name—and I knew better than to explore the traitorous feelings I had first felt in myself on that long-ago day. 

Yet my overtures with women never seemed to work out quite as my parents wished. I did not find them as a whole unattractive; but as I sat through painful chaperoned exchanges again and again, I discovered that the nature of education in Volstov kept us from having mutual topics of interest to discuss. I have no doubt that many of them knew more of the world than they let on, or had a thirst for knowledge like my own. But they seemed fearful of admitting such things just as much as I feared that I was cindy. Or at least partially so. 

Spring was just thawing the day Sergeant Adamo came to our home. While not all the snow had yet melted from Thremedon’s streets, the warmer temperatures and rain were beginning to wear away at what snowbanks remained, hardening them and making them treacherously icy. Water ran in thick rivulets outside the window of our library as I sat penning an essay for one of my tutors. Distantly, I could hear carriages sloshing through the puddles outside. 

Only vaguely did I register the details of the bell ringing outside the front door. I’m sure one of my parents’ servants answered it, and since I couldn’t hear who might be visiting at the other end of the house, I didn’t pay it much mind. After all, I was busy wrestling with the problems in real-world application of certain Troiian philosophies. 

Save for places like the library and solarium, my parents’ home was classically narrow and dark like many old manors made in the Ramanthine style. Its unique construction made for a certain muffling, almost smothering atmosphere; whatever conversations were had at other ends of the house, they were completely inaudible at the opposite one. Even footsteps got swallowed up by the wood and thick carpets. So it startled me when a knock sounded urgently on the outside of the library door. 

“Master Balfour?”

“Fuck!” Horrified, I tried to rescue my essay from the inkwell I had knocked over in surprise at the same time I hurriedly scooted my chair back from the table to avoid getting it on my clothes. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t directed at you.” My face burned with embarrassment. Hopefully Alexei hadn’t thought I was angry at him for disturbing me. “Let me just… I spilled ink on the table and it’s going to soak in if I don’t clean it—”

“I’ll take care of it, Master Balfour.” Alexei’s tone, quiet but insistent and uncharacteristically shaky, stopped me cold. Looking up at him as he crossed to me from the doorway, I studied the lines of his aged face. I had known this man most of my life—his wife had been mine and Amery’s wet-nurse when my mother had been unable to care for us herself, and the two of them had participated as much in raising us as our parents. Yet I had never seen him so shaken. 

When I didn’t move out of my chair, he looked at me again. His dark eyes shone in a strange way: and then I realized he was nearly crying. “Please, Balfour.” I hadn’t heard him refer to me so informally since I had been much younger. “You need to join your parents. They’re in the blue parlor.” 

“What’s wrong?” Though I’d stood automatically, I felt caught between wanting to dash to the parlor and wanting to stay, afraid of what I would find there. But Alexei just shook his head and motioned me toward the door. He was already moving the books and paper away from the spreading ink, but his hands were shaking and it was dripping onto the carpet. 

Self-consciously wiping my hands on my waistcoat, the ink stains on the brocade suddenly seemed less important. And by the time I was out in the hallway, and ran a hand through my hair to smooth it, the fact that I only really succeeded in smearing the ink on my face didn’t even occur to me. 

The winding hallways of home passed by in a haze. When I turned the handle on the door to the blue parlor, I was already asking, “What’s going on?” before I spotted Sergeant Adamo seated in one of the chairs. He looked distinctly uncomfortable and grim, with dark shadows under his eyes as though he hadn’t gotten sleep in years. He shifted a little on the chair, but didn’t look at me directly after that first glance at me with his grey eyes. Instead, he seemed to be waiting to see what my parents would do. 

They sat across from him, holding hands in a display of affection I had never seen them partake of in front of guests. Only then did I realize that my mother was crying softly, pressing her lace-lined handkerchief against her face with her other hand. My father’s face was pale and hollow as he looked at me, and he studied me like he had hoped that I would be someone else. 

“I…” Thick and choking, I found the words sticking in my throat. There would be only one reason I could think of that would bring the Chief Sergeant of the airmen to our home, and that would evoke such a response from my parents. “What happened to Amery?”

“Balfour.” My father’s voice barely rose above a whisper. He did not let go of my mother’s hand. “Sit down.” 

I had read enough frivolous romans to know all the cliché markers of such a moment: blood rushing in my ears, my heart pounding in my ribcage, cold sweat prickling my skin. Yet none of that was what I experienced or remember of that moment. Instead, it was my sudden awareness of how ridiculous I must look with ink on my clothes. How wide-eyed and young I still felt despite being nearly an adult. Quiet, I took one of the chairs at a right angle to the sofa and the Sergeant’s chair. When I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking, I forcibly laced them together and trapped them between my knees. 

My mother wouldn’t look at me, hiding her blue eyes behind her handkerchief. I had never seen her composure so cracked before; stupidly, I thought of how her makeup was going to stain the white lace. 

Shoulders bowed in a way that spoke only of grief, my father whetted his lips. “The Chief Sergeant—” But he couldn’t seem to get the rest of the words out, and glanced helplessly at the man seated across from him. I had never seen my father helpless in the face of anything before. That scared me most of all. Woodenly, I turned to the Sergeant in the hopes of an explanation. 

In that moment, he looked like a much older man. I suppose that was what war did to people. “The Esar ordered an air raid last night.” His voice came out in a rough growl, yet it did nothing to diminish how it sounded as though he was repeating what he must have written in his official report. “A routine patrol along the border. It was cloudy on our side, but the cover disappeared when we were over the Cobalts. The Ke-Han hit us with a twister, and Anastasia’s reins snapped.” The Chief Sergeant’s grey eyes studied me. “Amery fell.” 

“Oh.” What a stupid thing to say. “Did he— His body—”

Sergeant Adamo glanced at my parents; when he spoke again, his voice was lower. Like he wanted to keep them from hearing, but thought me brave enough to hear what they could not. It surprised me. I hadn’t ever thought anyone would think such a thing of me. But I straightened my spine, wanting to be worthy of that judgment. 

“We weren’t able to recover it. And I don’t know if any of our ground forces will be able to either. We were over Ke-Han territory when he fell.” 

“I see.” The sound of my mother’s wail made my spine crawl under my skin. “Do… Do the Ke-Han have Anastasia?” I couldn’t imagine such a thing, and what it would mean for Volstov. If anyone in Xi-An figured out how to construct dragons of their own, then what sort of turn would the war take? It seemed horrible to contemplate. 

“No.” Now, the Sergeant studied even more intently than he had before. But he seemed to be hesitating about something. I waited for him to continue. 

“Anastasia is still in one piece, and her reigns are being repaired. But without Amery… she needs a pilot.” 

I took a moment to absorb that, unsure why he was telling me such a thing. I didn’t recall any similar situations ever happening with any of the other dragons or airmen. All at once, my previous thoughts about how the dragons chose their riders flooded back to me. The dragons were notoriously choosy about who got to pilot them—how would it be possible for one to pick another after losing the man she had initially selected? Would Anastasia have to be put out of commission because she refused to choose another? Or would she even go so far as to tear herself apart in grief? 

I had no idea how dragons worked. 

“We don’t know if she will choose another one. But with Amery as the only man she’d shown interest in, the best place to start is with you. She might not even consider anyone else.” I appreciated that the Sergeant spoke plainly, and didn’t mince around the subject as other men might have. But at the same time, I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. Me? 

“I’m not my brother,” I blurted before I realized what I was saying. And I ducked my head in shame immediately after, feeling myself turn bright red. “I mean…”

“You’re not.” But unlike the faintly disappointed way my parents had always said it, Sergeant Adamo simply sounded honest. There was no disdain in his tone, nor anything but acknowledgment. “But I’m not in the habit of judging my airmen on who they’re not.” 

Entirely inappropriately, my heart twitched with pride. I squashed it immediately, fearing what it would mean that I could feel such a thing mere moments after learning of my brother’s death. Yet though a hollowness had settled nauseatingly in my stomach, my tears rose no further than the bitterness in my throat. Amery had been my brother… but he was also a stranger. A stranger that had grown up next to me, but a stranger nonetheless. 

Apparently judging my silence as hesitation, the Chief Sergeant shifted in his chair. “It’s your choice right now, and if it were just up to me I’d respect whatever decision you make. But I’m not sure th’Esar will agree if you say no.” Mouth turned down in a slanting frown, he asked me, “Do you understand?” 

I did. And for some reason, the idea of it didn’t scare me like I had thought it would. Twisting my fingers between my hands, I glanced at my parents. Neither of them looked at me directly. They had to know as much as I did what the only answer I could give was. And maybe this would amount to nothing after all. If Anastasia rejected me, that wasn’t my fault. 

“Yes,” I said at last, and couldn’t help but notice the way a bit of the tension left Sergeant Adamo’s shoulders. “Err. When do I need to go to the Airman?” 

“No point in putting this off any longer than necessary.” The Sergeant stood, drawing my gaze upward with him. “Either she’ll have you or she won’t.” 

“Oh,” I said, quite pointlessly. “Let me get my coat.”


	4. IVORY

IVORY

_I woke in dreams of fire and soot, in the sound of screeching metal and voices screaming in a language that hovered just at the edge of my understanding. Thrashing amidst tangled clouds and ash, I found myself touching flesh rather than dragonmetal—and dug my fingers against it, savage and panicked and filled with rage that boiled out of me like Cassiopeia’s fire. I must have fallen, but I didn’t remember the impact; all I knew now was that this man must be one of the Ke-Han: that I couldn’t let him take me alive, to protect the knowledge of my queen. Maybe if I was lucky I could make it back over the Cobalts, or find a patrol of Volstovic soldiers. But first I had to kill him, no matter how desperately he clawed at my wrists._

“Ivory!” Raphael’s voice rasped from somewhere below me, startling me out of the darkness. My hands loosened, and his voice became stronger, but there was a burr in it like something was pushing the air from his lungs. “Ivory, you’re hurting me.” 

I pulled my hands away from his throat like I’d been burned. Still leaning over him, my narrow shoulders shook with the force of the breath I took. When I spoke, my words came out no louder than a rough whisper. “We lost Amery last night. Real?” 

Scooting out from under me as much as he could, Raphael massaged his throat. “Yes.” The word drew a cough from him. 

“Raphael.” He flinched when I wrapped my arms around his waist and leaned my head against his breastbone. I did not think I could blame him, but the sight of him afraid of me hurt me in ways I could not reliably describe. “I am sorry. I thought…” 

One of his hands found its way into my hair, disheveled in many directions since I’d fallen asleep on it while it was still damp. “It’s okay. I’ve had my fair share of bad dreams too.” He chuckled lowly, sounding utterly like himself once again.

_Not like I do,_ I thought, but didn’t say. Raphael already knew that, and to remind him of it would cheapen his attempt to comfort me. Instead, I followed the routine that he had told me meant the most to him. My apologies always sounded somewhat stilted, he’d told me long ago, perhaps because I didn’t always understand why it was necessary. Something cold and mechanical always crept into my voice when I said it, making me sound insincere in ways that even our dragons did not. 

But this, I knew, would demonstrate to him that I did care I had hurt him. Hands sliding to his ribcage, I began to press my fingers against his skin in the pattern of my favorite song. At the same time, I kissed his chest, working my way upward to his collarbone. Once I reached it, I punctuated some of the notes with nips along the bone, or the tip of my tongue, or even light suction that would leave only the faintest of bruises. He hummed in a pleased tone, and the hand not in my hair stole down to play along the vertebrae at the top of my spine. When I bit particularly hard at his skin, his blunt nails raked over my upper back in a way that made me shiver. When we had first begun spending time in each other’s beds, I’d feared that Raphael would prove too fragile—that eventually he would tire of my savage hunger and avoid me. I should not have worried about such a thing; after all, Raphael was an airman for a reason. He had been playfully angry when I’d admitted such fears to him, grabbing me by the hair and seeking to show me that he could give as good as he got. 

He couldn’t. But I would never touch him the way I did the oh so still bodies I occasionally sought in the night. And letting him entertain the notion made him feel more secure in our relationship, perhaps reassuring him that I would not tire of him. 

Raphael sounded breathless by the time I had finished tracing the song along his ribcage. Rising along the length of his body, I shifted onto my side and pulled him close. Having him pressed against me so warmed at least the fringes of the cold that always remained frozen inside my chest. As he settled between the loop of my arms, I buried my nose in his dark curly hair and inhaled the scent of lilacs. 

“We should get up before someone wonders where we are,” he murmured after a few silent moments. I had been watching the light from outside slowly inch into the room through the sheets of rain coming down outside. Diluted and refracted by the water, the sun’s liquid light spilled in distorted shadows along the floor toward Raphael’s bed. Perhaps today it would even reach the span of his back if we remained like this long enough and the sun did not disappear behind the early spring clouds that congealed in the chilly sky. 

Reluctantly looking away from the pale glow on the floor, I studied the aged alarm clock on the nightstand. Its thin spindly hands informed me that it was well past noon. Raphael had not reset its alarm the night before, allowing us to sleep well into the day beyond our normal routine. 

“It may be too late for that,” I told him. Yet the fact that no one had come pounding at Raphael’s door meant the others were likely too busy grieving in their own ways to notice or care that neither of us had shown ourselves. Adamo would normally never suffer us to sleep past wake up call. I could not remember the last time we had that was not a national Volstovic holiday. 

It seemed an appropriate acknowledgement of Amery’s death. 

Raphael rolled onto his back to look at the alarm clock himself. Seeing it, he sighed and sat up. “Sloppy of me,” he said with a faint and humorless quirk to his lips. “Any other day and our secret would be out by now…”

“But it is not any other day.” 

“No.” Raphael sighed again and slid off the bed, its form rebounding as his weight left it. “No, it’s not.” Unable to keep my eyes off him, I studied him while he gathered up his clothes from the day before and put them through the laundry chute. Once the floor was clear, he crossed to his closet and pulled open the door. I saw him running his fingers over the garments hanging there, and knew before he did so that he was going to select the darkest ones he had. Such would only be appropriate, in the event of a fallen comrade. Surely Volstov would hold some kind of funeral for its dead airman, even if we didn’t have an actual body to bury. Having a place to visit would give comfort to his family. 

Or so I had been told by people who knew of such things. Though I knew my mother and father were buried somewhere in one of Thremedon’s graveyards, I had never felt any particular drive to go there. 

As he dressed, Raphael mused aloud. He often did so, though he categorically refused to admit that he muttered on the occasions I had mentioned it. This time, his thoughts had nothing to do with literature or art or philosophy. “I wonder what th’Esar is going to do with Anastasia,” he ventured, buttoning his shirt over the place where I had left marks with my mouth. “Do you think she might choose another pilot?”

I wondered what Cassiopeia would have done, if I had been the one to fall instead of Amery. A poisonous fever of jealousy washed over me, making the muscles in my jaw tighten and my spine straighten with spite. “I hope not.” Raphael looked over at me, with how my voice snapped like frost on a brittle piece of glass. “She is Amery’s dragon. She should not allow anyone else to ride her just because he is dead.” 

“Are you saying that because you think it would be an insult to Amery, or because you would not want Cassiopeia to replace you?” As always, Raphael demonstrated his uniquely unsettling ability to know what I was thinking. No one else I had ever met had been able to do such a thing. And since I trusted my own mind so little, it seemed alarming that someone else could know it better than I did. 

“Both,” I answered at last, pushing aside the covers so I could stretch my toes down to the carpet. While Raphael finished dressing, I made his bed as I always did, picking off the occasional silver hair I found and placing them in the wastebasket. “Would you want Natalia to do the same? Or would you want another dragon if you survived and she did not?” 

Behind me, he remained silent for a few very long moments. “…No. I suppose you’re right. I just can’t imagine what they’re going to do with her. It seems a shame to decommission her.”

“I have never thought we should emulate the Ke-Han, but perhaps ritual suicide is the only answer in this case. Did you not hear her crying last night? Anyone the Esar forces in front of her is only going to end up on her claws.” Since I never allowed any of my clothing to remain in Raphael’s room, I had to return to the loose shirt and soft pants I had left the previous night on his floor. Smoothing a hand over my hair, I turned to face him again. The liquid sunlight had caught in his hair and slid along his cheek, making my Raphael look like something out of one of his beloved romans. Silent and solemn, he returned to me and leaned up for a soft kiss. 

“I’ll see you at lunch,” he murmured distractedly. “Make sure no one sees you leave.”

“They never do,” I replied.


	5. BALFOUR

BALFOUR

My parents seemed caught between wanting to accompany us and being terrified of witnessing what my fate might be. No doubt wanting to avoid a scene as much as I did, Sergeant Adamo made it clear they could journey with us to the Airman, but could not enter the hangar. He didn’t say that it might be too dangerous, but I think every one of us knew what wasn’t being said. If Amery’s dragon took a disliking to me, in all likelihood there would be very little that either her handlers or the Sergeant could do to save me. And potentially anyone that remained in the hangar while I met her.

Rather than fear for my safety on that carriage ride, my mind occupied itself with circularly wondering what Amery’s dragon would be like. Though I suppose she wasn’t his dragon anymore, truly. She wasn’t anyone’s now, except perhaps the Esar’s. But she might yet be mine, and that above all I had difficulty processing. Self-conscious that I had been fidgeting with the edge of my coat, I forced my hands together and placed them between my knees as I had in the parlor. My parents did not seem to notice, no matter how many times my father had scolded me for my nervous habits in the past. And the Sergeant didn’t seem concerned, too busy lost in his own thoughts as he stared out the window and tried to take up as little space in the carriage as possible. 

What was I going to do with a dragon? Be an Airman, of course, but what did that _mean_? Amery had been the brave one, the hero and the soldier. I had never been trained as any of those things, and didn’t even know if I had the capacity for them inside me. Would Anastasia even look at me if I did not? But what if she chose me and then I proved myself to be completely unable to take on the task of being her pilot? 

I couldn’t imagine Amery ever worrying about those things. It seemed an even more definite mark of my lacking talents that I didn’t know how to feel about this coming meeting in the slightest. 

Seeking something to distract myself with, I found my eyes wandering around the inside of the carriage. My parents had taken up flanking positions on either side of me, silently protective and preventing me from looking at them directly without making my staring rather obvious. This arrangement left Sergeant Adamo alone on the other seat, though he’d naturally scooted over to one of the windows rather than settling more comfortably in the middle of the cushioned bench. 

With nothing else falling within my gaze, I couldn’t help but study him. He seemed the picture of what an airman should be, dignified and serious and strong. The Sergeant did not seem to be an old man, but he wasn’t young either. Neither could I seem to place an age for him; without knowing just how his job might have aged him before his time, it was impossible to tell. And in the rainy shadows inside the carriage, I couldn’t tell if his sandy hair just got lighter towards his temples, or had actually started to grey. 

Fortunately, if he did notice that I was watching him, he never let on. I didn’t want to disappoint him, just as I’d never wanted to disappoint my father though I inevitably always did. Some part of me wanted to call the carriage to a halt, to apologize to the Chief Sergeant and explain that I couldn’t possibly be the man he was looking for. No matter that I had shared familial blood with Amery, I was nothing like him. No amount of wishing had ever made it so, and that wasn’t about to change just because he’d died serving the country and now the airmen had a vacancy to fill. If his erstwhile dragon could indeed choose someone else, I was the last person in Volstov that should be put before her. Weren’t there others, hopefuls to the title of “airman” that would be more well-suited? Perhaps soldiers that had already gone through training, and actually _wanted_ to ride one of the Esar’s metal beasts. 

All I knew was that I couldn’t even imagine it. Just thinking of soaring high above Thremedon caused my stomach to turn. Fearing that my sudden onset of nausea would be noticeable, I lowered my head and closed my eyes. One of my thumbs traced a pattern against my opposite palm, and I counted the number of circles I made against my own skin over the course of the remaining journey to the Airman. 

At the very least, the rain had stopped by the time we arrived. Though my boots splashed in the thin rivulets of water between the cobblestones, I would not look like some drowned waif when I stepped into the hangar to meet my fate. The lingering dampness in my coat made me feel clammy, though, and a few half-dry tendrils of hair stuck to the back of my neck. Swiping at them, I only made myself feel more self-conscious. 

Sergeant Adamo led us into the Airman through the main entrance. We returned to the same sitting room that he had met my parents in before, and now I judged it to be the place where the airmen always met visitors on official business. “You can wait here,” he told my parents, with a hint of something in his voice that sounded like gentleness. “This won’t take long.”

Neither my mother nor my father seemed sure whether to take that as a reassurance or a warning. 

We didn’t linger, for which I was thankful. My stomach had worked itself into knots by then, and delaying seemed like the cruelest torture. Feeling woefully out of place, I followed the Chief Sergeant as he led me through sections of the Airman that I had never expected to see. It was not an attractive building from the outside, but I found its interior to hold a peculiar sort of charm. The light coming in through the windows kept it surprisingly well lit, so much so that there scarcely seemed any need for artificial lighting in the hallways. At least, not until after nightfall. 

My hands were still shaking. Denied the possibility of stilling them the way I had before, I shoved them into my coat pockets. Sergeant Adamo glanced at me when he caught the motion, but didn’t speak for a moment even as I ducked my head in embarrassment. At last, he said, “I’m sorry we couldn’t better prepare you first.” 

“It’s okay,” I said automatically, and then felt my face turning red when he looked at me with one eyebrow arched. “I mean, I’m sure I’d be less nervous in that case, but this isn’t your fault.” I wasn’t quite sure if I was just talking about my having to meet a dragon, or Amery’s death as well. But truthfully, I did not think that my brother’s death was this man’s fault. Not that I imagined he needed me to tell him that. 

Yet he surprised me with something that almost looked like a smile before he turned away again. We had stopped in front of a heavy metal door at the bottom of a set of stairs. It appeared to be reinforced, thick bars of steel ribbing the front of it and covering the hinges, perhaps so that they would not give out with its no doubt considerable weight. Sergeant Adamo paused before it, one hand on the bolt that kept it shut. “This is the hangar. All of the dragons are kept here, and their pilots’ rooms are on the floor above their pens. Anastasia is toward the back.” His grey eyes studied me again. “Are you ready?”

I thought it kind of him to ask. But putting this off seemed cowardly to me, and I suspected the Chief Sergeant would not think well of me if I delayed just because I was nervous. Standing here longer wasn’t going to make me feel any better, only give me the opportunity to worry even more. 

“I’m ready.” Hopefully, I sounded surer than I felt. At the last moment, I thought to ask: “How will I know if she wants me?”

Sergeant Adamo chuckled softly, a sound I almost lost as he pulled back the bolt with a heavy thunk. “She’ll tell you.”

With that mysterious answer, he pushed open the door. The wealth of sound that washed over us surprised me; as heavy as the door was, it had muffled the noise naturally present in the hangar. Though I could detect voices, I couldn’t make out what they were saying. As it was, they were nearly drowned out by clanging, grinding, and scraping metal on metal. 

Compared to the natural lighting of the Airman’s upper corridors, the hangar was flooded with artificial gas lighting. It glittered on the walls and floor, which was furrowed deep with gouges that could easily have rent a man in half had anyone been in the way of the talons that had created them. Yet those details ultimately faded from my notice. How could they keep my interest captured when I now was about to meet, close and intimate, with the dragons I had only ever seen from far below in Thremedon?

The closest pen, several yards away, housed a dragon. A huge, metal _dragon_. She watched me with burnished, nearly glowing metal eyes, shifting in her pen to get a better look at me. Through the joints of her scales and segments, I could detect the fiery glow of whatever combination of magic and mechanics powered the engine in her belly. The rivets and metal sheeting of her wings opened and folded along her sides, perhaps in interest or agitation. 

“That’s Proudmouth,” Sergeant Adamo said, leaning closer so I could hear him more readily. “My girl.”

“She’s gorgeous.” I had to repeat myself because I had spoken too softly. The Chief Sergeant appeared pleased with my compliment, but played it off gruffly as he closed the door to the hangar behind us and shut the bolt.

“Don’t let her hear you say that,” he growled, “or she’ll fawn over you and we’ll never make it to Anastasia.”

Whereas before I had been more nervous about what it could mean were a dragon to choose me as a pilot, now the sheer presence of danger made it past my mind’s protective shell of shock. If my brother’s former partner was anything like Proudmouth, she would be able to bite me in half, or impale me on her claws, or crush me with her tail solely because I annoyed her. I hoped that she was not a foul-tempered creature; or, if she was, that my death would be quick, at least. I had no idea what to expect. 

My knotted stomach began to downright ache as Sergeant Adamo and I made our way down the thick metal grated stairs to the floor of the hangar. The place was huge and booming with echoes that made my ears hurt—and though Proudmouth was the first and closest dragon, she was by no means the only one watching us as we made our way past the pens. 

How different they all looked surprised me. Everyone knew the dragons had different architects, that multiple magicians had built the different iterations. But from the ground, we citizens never got to see the individuality and personality that suffused each one. Proudmouth was all clean but bulky lines; more robust than delicate, her sheer size made most of the others seem small. That, along with the rougher, iron-like appearance of her hide and wings, gave her the quality of being built by someone who valued utility over aesthetics. Yet she held a near savage beauty all her own, and I had no doubt that the Chief Sergeant loved her. 

Beyond her, more of them watched us with eyes of glowing gemstone. One of them, steely blue with some nearly iridescent metal along her neck and belly, breathed hot air at us as we passed by. Another, brass and bronze, paced restlessly; her tail had a long tapered tip like a spade or a blade on the end of it. A third, the color of white gold with delicate filigree along her wings, stared at me in a way I could only describe as disapproving. 

I lost any sense of what order they followed as we passed, drowning in the sight of these beautiful and terrifying creatures and the distinctly unpleasant impression that my heart had crawled up into my throat. One had swirling designs on her hide, another with a faint pattern of geometric shapes stamped into the sheets of her wings. Yet all of these interesting details faded from my mind as we neared one of the last pens closest to the back. 

She was one of the smaller dragons, and certainly the most delicate. I hadn’t seen her at first, because rather than standing she’d been curled at the bottom of her pen. As we approached, she raised her narrow head, elegant swept-back horns catching and reflecting the light of the gas lamps. Rather than mirror bright, her silver and platinum hide had a texture to it like frosted glass, softening the way the light played along her back. Some of the places, where first I had thought it was only a trick of the light, proved to be such a pale blue that it looked like the sky just after dawn. Her long, swan-like neck had been engraved in a lace-like pattern as intricate as the brocade on expensive waistcoats. 

In a word: breathtaking. 

Blue eyes studied me for a moment, a tendril of steam escaping from her thin nostrils. Then she opened her mouth and said, “You smell like Amery.”

The sound of that voice hit me like a heavy blow to the stomach. Distinctly feminine even for the gears in it, it sounded mournful and hopeful all at once. Yet that astounded me less than the fact that the dragon had a voice at all. If it weren’t for the sight of her jaw moving, I might have thought I’d gone absolutely mad.

“I’m Balfour. Err. Balfour Vallet.” I had no idea how to introduce myself to a dragon. “Amery is… was my brother.”

The dragon keened then, a deafening sound that nearly had me pressing my hands over my ears. I’d never thought I would hear such a grief-filled sound come from a machine. _But she isn’t just a machine,_ I thought. And something gentle and sad in my heart wanted to tell her it was okay. 

“Sweet boy,” she crooned, plaintive and heartbroken, “come closer. Let me get a better look at you.”

Sergeant Adamo glanced at me, but I was already stepping forward to meet her. My terror had diminished not at all, but something other than fear propelled me toward her. I had already fallen in love with her then, but didn’t know what to call it. “You’re Anastasia,” I breathed. 

“Yes.” Anastasia had risen onto her haunches, craning her neck down over the sides of her pen. Hot air wafted over me when she breathed. “Balfour.” The sound of my own name made me shiver. “I’m sorry I lost Amery.”

Every mote of sadness seemed collected in those words. Even Adamo bowed his head. I had no idea what was the right thing to say, but somehow the words came to me anyway. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

“Sweet boy,” Anastasia echoed, but she sounded affectionate rather than only sad. “Do you know what will happen to me now?” I shook my head. “The Esar will have me destroyed. I wanted no pilot other than Amery.” Her long tail twitched behind her, cat-like. “I had decided to kill anyone he tried to force on me.”

A beat passed before I realized she was waiting for me to respond. My throat felt numb. “You haven’t hurt me.”

She rumbled somewhere deep in her chest. “No. I won’t hurt you, Balfour.” Now, she seemed almost bashful. “I was ready to let the Esar end me. But… if you want me… to belong to me… I want you. No other. Will you stay with me?”

What other answer could I give? I loved her already, more than I had ever loved reading, or cool stones in my pockets, or soft fabric, or my mother. “Yes. I’ll stay with you.”


	6. IVORY

IVORY

Late that wet afternoon, Adamo called all of us to the solarium. I expected him to lay out the coming schedule for Amery’s funeral, what would happen to Anastasia, whether th’Esar would commission an entirely new dragon now that Amery was gone.

None of us expected what he did lead with. 

“We found a pilot for Anastasia.”

The room exploded. Rook was shouting; Compagnon was scowling; Merritt had gone pale. Even Ace had blurted a caustic, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Jeannot had folded his arms tightly over his chest, staring down at the floor in defiance of his usual thoughtful stare. I saw Raphael tense a few chairs down from me. Ghislain rumbled with disapproval. I myself stared out the window, wishing that I had more than just two knives on me, and that I could meet face to face with this so-called pilot. Privately. Only one of us would be leaving that meeting with all of our blood. 

“Quiet!” Adamo barked, and though Rook growled like some kind of animal, he actually shut up for once. “I know this is too soon after Amery. It seems disrespectful to me too. But th’Esar isn’t giving us a damn choice, and he was going to decommission her if she refused to pick someone. Better that she and Amery’s sacrifice aren’t in vain.” 

“Like hell it is,” Rook muttered. The others nodded in agreement. 

Petulantly, Merritt added, “But she’s _Amery’s_.” While he sounded very much like a child when he said it, I knew that the rest of us shared the sentiment. As I’d expressed to Raphael earlier that day, to have someone else ride Anastasia seemed like an insult in the face of all that we had done and were. I could not imagine Amery feeling any differently had one of us fallen in his place. So there was a hint of betrayal I felt toward Adamo; we all knew that the Esar ultimately determined what we were and weren’t allowed to do, but the man had moved rather quickly for the fact that Amery had only been lost the night before. There still might be a chance of recovering him alive, and then what awkwardness would that create? Dragons were not meant to have more than one pilot. 

But even as I thought it, I knew the likelihood of that happening was very small. If the fall itself hadn’t killed Amery, then the Ke-Han surely would have. 

“I know.” Adamo sighed. “But don’t make this any harder than it needs to be. If Anastasia saw fit to choose someone, we’ll have to abide by that.”

The unspoken “someone else” hung nevertheless in the air between us. I could not help but wonder if it would have been so easy for Cassiopeia to select another pilot in the event of my death. Judging by the tension in the room, the other airmen were considering not dissimilar topics. Were the bonds we had with our girls only felt in one direction? After everything it had come to mean to be an airman, that potentiality seemed the most horrible thing to think about. The assumption we’d always had was that our dragons felt as strongly about us as we did about them. If we were wrong… then everything we had ever told ourselves about their being more than just machines was wrong too. 

“Have _never_ would have picked someone else.” Rook’s words came out in a hiss, and though I could not say I liked the man, I hoped he was right. Certainly, Havemercy’s refusal to take a pilot until he came along seemed to indicate he was. “Anastasia _ought_ t’be fucking scrapped if Amery mattered that little to her. Fuck th’Esar and the asshole she chose.”

Our Sergeant looked very tired. “The man she chose is Amery’s younger brother.” 

That made us pause again. Incredulously, Maghoughin echoed, “His brother? That scrawny little boy that stumbled in here four years ago? What the fuck does he expect to do with a dragon? Didn’t look like he could handle his own cock in a pissing contest, much less fly a swift.” 

To say that Adamo did not look pleased would be an understatement so vast Cassiopeia could have disappeared inside it. “Looks like he’s matured in the last few years, unlike the rest of you.” His gaze swept from one end of our lineup to the other. “Your bitching isn’t going to change anything, and I don’t want to hear it. Do any of you have some bastioned-damned useful questions?” 

“Yeah,” Rook piped up in mock-cheerfulness before Adamo could tell him to shut the fuck up. “If they’re just giving anyone a dragon these days, can we get some pretty whore on one? I’m sure it’d save all of us a lot of money at the Fans.” 

The comment raised a few rueful chuckles from some of the others, and a hastily-stifled giggle from Compagnon as the Sergeant told Rook just where he could shove those smart remarks. But I felt in no mood to laugh, closing my eyes against the washed-out light of the late afternoon and listening instead to the sound of the resumed rain on the roof of the solarium. Part of me wanted to escape down into Cassiopeia’s pen, but I suspected that the sight of Anastasia would make my temper even sourer. 

I simply couldn’t believe that this was what we had come to. 

Once the others had quieted again, Adamo explained that we wouldn’t be meeting this new pilot for two more days. Apparently, he was being excused to participate in Amery’s funeral and pack his belongings before coming to live with the rest of us at the Airman. Our Sergeant lingered longer on the details of the funeral than he did on the ones about Amery’s brother; no doubt it was an attempt to occupy our minds with something else, even if remembering that Amery was dead made us even angrier. But we would be expected to be there no matter how we felt about the situation as a whole, and Adamo made it clear that he wouldn’t suffer any of us to shirk this particular responsibility, even if he had to drag us to the cemetery himself. 

I did not doubt that he was telling the truth. But even so, I thought the threat likely pointless. No matter how angry we might be at the perceived disrespect to Amery, none of us would further dishonor his sacrifice by refusing to show up at his funeral. 

When Adamo released us from the meeting, Rook stormed entirely out of the Airman. No doubt he intended to occupy himself with alcohol and whores at Our Lady of A Thousand Fans. Not too long later, Maghougin and Merritt braved the cold and fading light for likely the same purpose. Ace disappeared below into the hangar, and later on I heard the hatch open as he took Thoushalt up into the sky. 

Each one of us had our own little diversions. I felt compelled to visit the piano at first, but when I thought of how much Amery had enjoyed listening to me play, and that day when his brother had wandered so rudely into the common room, my desire for it disappeared. Instead, I sat at the table by the window there and set about sharpening my knives. Imagining all the ways I could use them on this pretender to Amery’s place did very little to soothe the rage squirming and skittering inside me. Its clawed fingers kept inching up and down my spine, tightening the muscles in my shoulders until finally a cramp started to develop below my left shoulder blade. Stubborn and perturbed at the rebellion of my own body, I savagely ignored it and continued with my task. 

After a time, Raphael stepped into the common room with one of his romans. He seemed surprised not to see me at the piano at first, watching me a breath longer than was typical. Had anyone else been there, it would have been a curious hitch in his actions. Yet since the others had seen fit to leave me alone, there were no witnesses other than myself and my knives. 

Without saying anything at first, Raphael crossed to the sofa nearby and sat down on it. A glance toward him, and I recognized the covers of one of his favorite books of poetry. No doubt he had chosen it for the comfort it had offered him in the past. Indeed, this was the volume that held one of his favorite pieces of all: a poem that my Raphael had said reminded him of me. 

I made another pass with my whetstone over one of my knives. The rasp of it reminded me of Cassiopeia, since sometimes the metal sheeting of her wings scraped together with a similar noise. Enjoying the way the sound wormed its way into my ears, I repeated the motion a few more times before testing the edge very lightly against my thumb. I pressed down just enough to cut myself, drawing a belated and faint jolt of pain and the thinnest of slices. So fine was it that the narrow line of blood only rose to the surface of my skin after a few seconds, as though even my body had not realized at first that it had been hurt. 

Raphael had caught me at one of my most intimate moments. When I looked up from my fascination with my own blood, he was watching me. His head was still tilted down toward the roman, but his dark eyes studied me with something that I couldn’t quite identify. Perhaps concern? Or want? The desire to move to me and lick the blood off my skin like I’d told him I liked? 

“Hm?” 

Scarcely a sound at all, and yet he knew it for the question that it was. Raphael shook his head, glancing away toward his roman again before answering. “Nothing. Just watching you.” 

“I don’t imagine I am that interesting to watch.” Wiping clean the blade of the knife I was holding, I set it down on the cloth with the others. 

Raphael didn’t respond right away. Instead, he looked down at his roman and turned a page absently like it occurred to him he should to keep up the illusion of reading. “What do you think of…”

He didn’t need to finish the question. “I do not think he will last long. Not with a traitorous dragon.” Even though Cassiopeia and I were apart, I knew how angry she must be the Anastasia had done something so cowardly. Far better it would have been if she had perished along with Amery. But repeating such things was pointless, and I was not sentimental. What was done was done. None of us could no more change it than move the Cobalts. 

I remembered Amery’s brother distantly, a specter in my memories that seemed hardly real. Barely a narrow strip of a boy then, though we’d all been younger, and not even on track to be half the man that Amery had been. The Esar hadn’t commissioned a new dragon in years, and we had all moved and learned to function as a unit. Now we would have to learn all over again with this new stranger. His weakness would make us weak. 

His presence would create the space for more mistakes to be made. And if his stupidity lost me Raphael, then Balfour would follow not very far behind. 

“Mm.” Whether Raphael was simply lost in thought or reluctant to continue discussing the subject of Anastasia and her new pilot, I didn’t know. But he ran his fingers down the bound leather spine of his roman, rubbing his skin over the faint impression left by the title when the printers had stamped the name of it there. It had nearly been worn away by now from his constant fidgeting with it, and creases had begun to make themselves known along where he routinely opened to read the same poems over and over again. A creature of habit, my Raphael, if there had ever been one. 

“You seem distracted,” I told him softly as I began to replace my knives in their sheathes. Satisfied that they were honed and keen, I could no longer justify working at them with the whetstone. If I sharpened them too much or too obsessively, the blades would eventually weaken or wear through to nothing. 

I had ruined other knives during my childhood from such abuse. 

“Not as distracted as I would like to be,” Raphael muttered, though he didn’t glance at me with his dark eyes. I knew the tone even so, and tilted my head to one side as I studied him, hands still over my belongings now that they had been secured once more. 

Whetting my lips in anticipation of how he would taste, I told him: “Go to bed, Raphael.”


	7. BALFOUR

BALFOUR

I could scarcely tell where one day ended and the other began. Before, my life had been advancing at a manageable and rather sedate pace. Beyond the stress I had to deal with in my education, things had been… well, if not easy, then at least predictable. Now, I felt as though I was hurtling uncontrollably toward a future I knew nothing about. No matter how I felt about it, discussing it with my parents wasn’t an option. They had already lost one son to the service of Volstov. To trouble them with my own worries seemed petty. Surely, they were no doubt grateful that women were never presented to the dragons; my sister Cosette would be spared mine and Amery’s fates, at least.

I wished I could have spoken to her. No matter what society might declare as a woman’s place, Cosette was more like Amery than I was. She’d always had a certain spirit and backbone concealed under her gentle and well-mannered exterior: like steel ribbing in a corset, she had always joked. But she was at a girl’s finishing school now, a boarding school that kept us apart save for the occasional letter. Cosette no doubt would think this exciting; never one to linger long on grief, she would mourn Amery’s death and then compose herself as resolutely as she always did. 

That first night when I lay agonizingly awake in my bed, I tried to imagine what she would say to me if she weren’t absent. _There’s no point in being nervous, Balfour,_ I thought in her voice, _that dragon already picked you. And if_ she _thinks you’re good enough to be her pilot, then so should you._

For the next few days, I tried not to notice the way my parents watched me. For the next few days, I alternated between staying out of their way and doing what I could to help prepare for Amery’s funeral. Th’Esar had publicly offered to aid us in planning it, in honor of the fact that Amery was a national hero of Volstov. Which meant that there was actually very little for me to do, other than occasionally sign for deliveries or answer people at the door, or find places for the endless deluge of bouquets and sympathy notes that flooded into our home. Some of them had even included perfumed letters from dramatic young women who professed they were distraught over Amery’s death and didn’t know how they would live without him. These above all made me uncomfortable, and after the first few I ceased opening them and condemned the scented ones straight to the fire, afraid of what insincere romantic sentimentality I would find within them next. 

Though I had free time because of th’Esar’s kindness, I couldn’t quite bring myself to do the most unpleasant thing: pack for the Airman. I had lived my entire life in the same house, in the same bedroom with the window seat and walk-in closet, with the same view out the window and the occasional piece of wistful detritus from my childhood. It wasn’t the comfortable trappings of wealth that I somehow feared leaving—no, I wasn’t some spoiled, high-maintenance whelp that craved coddling. But in a very boyish way, the idea of leaving home distinctly disturbed me. 

My mind lingered on what I could possibly take with me to the Airman that would serve to remind me of home without seeming too childish. Never having known what an Airman typically kept in his room, I wasn’t sure what would be appropriate. Packing my clothes was the easy part. But once I’d finished with that, I kept hesitating: putting things in my trunk and then taking them out again. 

Should I bring any of my romans? I’d been fond of them since childhood, and I kept finding myself pacing back and forth in front of the shelves. Finally I chose one of Ramanthe fairy tales; one about Troian philosophy I’d fallen in love with during my studies; one about Verrugan pirates; one of Marathine poetry; and one subsequent volume about the history of Volstov. I had covered all the basics that way, I thought, and was unsure why the thought amused me so. 

Taking anything more personal or precious seemed somehow… dangerous. I wasn’t sure why I felt that way, but some innate sense of foreboding made me certain that something would harm them were I to take them. So I kept warring with myself about whether to include them for comfort or not risk it at all. 

I still hadn’t finished my packing when the day of Amery’s funeral finally arrived. True, I would be journeying to the Airman permanently the next morning, but I had convinced myself that I could finish loading my trunk in the evening before I retired to bed. Though aware the procrastination had likely only jarred my nerves further, I succeeded in avoiding the responsibility as I prepared myself for the ceremony. 

It would be the last small speck of irresponsibility I could afford myself, I thought. And by such did I justify my actions. Because once I officially became an Airman on the morrow, I could no longer even play at such things as I might have done in my youth. 

As I dressed in the black funereal garb necessary for my brother’s memorial, it occurred to me how young and pale I looked. Lack of sleep had taken a subtle toll in the last few days as well as grief: with long shadows under my eyes and my cheekbones showing in a way that they hadn’t since the last time I’d had a fever, I looked as woefully unprepared to join the ranks of the Dragon Corps as I felt. 

But there was nothing for it, and no way I could delay. Ready or not, I would be expected to assume my brother’s duties in less than twenty-four hours. Well, not the whole of them, I supposed. I doubted that Sergeant Adamo or anyone else would want me flying on Anastasia until I’d completed some course of studies and perhaps practiced securing her safety lines and saddle on the ground. After Amery’s unfortunate death, I felt sure that everyone was going to be extra particular that whatever kept us on the dragons didn’t fail. 

Ke-Han wind magic had seemed a distant thing until now, little more than a theory that I’d heard discussed by my tutors. But now it would become a regular fixture in my life, and something that could easily claim myself or my dragon if we weren’t careful enough. 

My dragon. Those words made me shiver, but I hadn’t dared utter them to anyone else yet. I loved Anastasia and wanted her to be mine, but even so she didn’t yet seem as though she belonged to me. Maybe, I thought, I would feel differently after Amery’s spirit had been laid to rest, even if we didn’t have a body to actually cremate and inter in the family vault. 

The day of Amery’s funeral, it didn’t quite rain. But the chilly mist crept through my coat and gloves and into my bones, making my fingers ache unpleasantly after my parents and I stepped out of the carriage. 

My mother and father moved as a unit, her hand on his arm, and I trailed behind them like a stray dog or a beggar. A number of relatives flocked around us as we made our way to the vault, but beyond a few nodded pleasantries I didn’t feel like speaking with them. Fortunately, they seemed to judge it disrespectful to ask about my pending position as an Airman—either that, or they didn’t know yet: an arrangement that suited me just fine.

Most of the people at the funeral, I at least recognized. If not relatives, they were friends of the family whose names I’d been required to learn for propriety’s sake. But the tall, thin man in th’Esar’s livery was a stranger to me; at least I knew his purpose. Since my mother knew the Esar, evidently he found it necessary to send a personal expression of his sympathy. 

How odd that his “personal gesture” included a complete stranger. 

As I took my place on my father’s right, however, th’Esar’s man was not what drew my curiosity. Rather, it was the crowd of thirteen men arranged neatly with the guests. Their uniforms, obviously recognizable as those of the airmen, were drawing stares other than just my own. But though everyone else studied them with the awe of those encountering living heroes, my scrutiny was based in something entirely different. As of tomorrow, these men would be… well, maybe not friends right away, but companions. Comrades. Brothers in arms. 

I didn’t know how close any of them had been to Amery, and I had even less idea how they would respond to me. Never in my life had anyone thought it important that I knew anything about these men. Even after Amery had been sent away to join them. He did not write home frequently, and never to me. I suppose sharing his impressions of the other airmen was not something that Amery had thought worth his while. 

Guilty as it made me feel, my attention was focused more on the living airmen than the ceremony that would supposedly lay my brother to rest. I understood that such gestures were important, particularly to my parents: this would allow them a place to visit Amery in spirit, if not in body, and some sense of closure to his death. For my part, as those gathered watched the internment of an empty stone box within our vault, I couldn’t help but think all of this was pointless. Amery was never going to be truly at rest here in our familial place. No, his body would slowly decay in the Cobalts until nothing but his scattered bones remained—that was, if wild animals or the Ke-Han soldiers didn’t disturb him. But even that possibility mattered very little to me. Amery no longer inhabited that body anyway. What did it matter what really happened to it?

So though I tried my best to avoid embarrassing my family with my preoccupation, I snuck as many glances as I could at the line of uniformed men. Their coats were a deep royal blue, something that I had once thought was peculiar considering the Volstovic love of red. Lined with gold and shiny brass buttons, they looked like something out of a parade rather than a funeral. From the trim lines of their trousers, to their high polished boots, to the immaculate white gloves covering their arms up to the elbow, they looked every part the heroes. 

A shame, I thought distractedly, that I had never gotten to see my brother in his uniform. 

Most of the faces, I did not recognize: a man with sleepy looking eyes and auburn hair; another, tall and darkly complected, with a hawkish nose that appeared to have been broken in the past; a blonde with streaks of blue dyed into his braids; a narrow faced man with a mouth that seemed set in a perpetual smirk. Others, I did recall: the one with the dark eyes and dark curly hair; the other Ramanthe-looking fellow; the Chief Sergeant, of course. 

And the silver-haired man that had been playing the piano the day that I last had seen my brother. He stood straight-backed and regal with the others, some of whom occasionally shifted their weight from one foot to the other or fidgeted subtly. On the other hand, I didn’t think I had seem him move or even blink since they had arrived. As cold and motionless as any statue, he made something twist low in my stomach that I hadn’t thought about in years. Not since the last time I had seen him. 

And I still didn’t even know his name. What would he think of me taking my brother’s place? I could read nothing from his expression, except a closed off secrecy that denied any emotional display. While on some of the others I could read boredom or anger or grief, the strange pale man looked altogether unconcerned with anything, up to and including the cold mist blanketing the grounds. 

He might have been well away on the back of his dragon for all he seemed to care about what was going on. 

Not once did he glance my way—and I could not seem to decide if that relieved me or disappointed me. But some of the other airmen did take notice of me; while Amery and I had only the barest of familial resemblances, my place at my father’s side surely banished any doubt as to who I was. And even then I was not stupid enough to think that the Chief Sergeant would have neglected to tell them that I would be taking over Amery’s place on Anastasia. 

Toward the end of the ceremony, when I glanced their way again, I found one specific airman watching me at length. The one with the blue streaks in his hair, a certain angry energy about him that I could read in the lines of his body. Even from this distance, I could tell that he didn’t want to be here. Had he disliked Amery, perhaps? But with the way he was eying me, it seemed that he wasn’t thrilled about me either. A rather unfair judgment to make considering he didn’t even know me, I thought.

He didn’t look away when our eyes met. Instead, he held my gaze in a way that made me distinctly uncomfortable. 

I found that I could not hold his gaze, and chided myself for the weakness of it. If these men did not like me already, surely I would not win any more favor by appearing so easily cowed. The one whose glare I could still feel on me was surely no more than a few years older than myself, but he carried himself with the sort of lazy confidence of someone who was important and knew it. A drastic contrast to myself as I ducked my head and tried to focus on the funerary rites the chaplain was performing.

When he finally finished his pronouncements, those in attendance began to disperse. I could not blame them, for it was damp and cold and I was shivering even in my suit. But unlike those guests, most touched only distantly by Amery’s death, I couldn’t simply leave—no matter how uncomfortable I was with loitering awkwardly some paces away from where my parents were conversing softly with the chaplain.  
The Airmen didn’t move, remaining in their neat lines though I could now detect a greater degree of slouches and words exchanged. They seemed utterly alien, and I was glad it was only the Chief Sergeant who broke away from their number to approach my parents. 

He cut quite a figure in his uniform, though he didn’t look entirely comfortable in it. He nodded to me briefly as he passed, but didn’t linger as the priest stepped away and Sergeant Adamo greeted my mother and father. I couldn’t hear what he said to them, but I knew what it had to be—condolences from himself and the other Airmen. I wondered if he had promised my mother to keep Amery safe, and if now when she looked at me she would see me more as a ghost than anything else. If she thought of me as already dead like my brother. 

That thought made me sadder than anything else, tightening my heart in my chest till it felt like I couldn’t breathe. 

Chief Sergeant Adamo did stop as he passed me on his return. He set one huge hand on my shoulder after a moment, squeezing lightly before he appeared to check himself and his hand dropped back to his side. How small and young and completely inadequate I felt before him. 

“We’ll miss Amery,” he said, and continued before I could feel my heart sink, “but it won’t do you any credit to try to be him. I meant it when I said I don’t judge a man on who he’s not.” Though he didn’t glance toward the Airmen, something in his posture changed subtly to indicate them: the slant of one shoulder or the angle of his chin. “It’ll take them some time.”

“Yes, sir.” 

He seemed satisfied with that answer. 

I didn’t watch as he and the others climbed back into their carriages. Instead, I found myself standing solitary in front of Amery’s monument, left respectfully alone so I could… speak to him, I suppose. Or whatever it was grieving family members were supposed to do in this moment. 

But what was there to say? Everything seemed hollow somehow, and fidgeting with my sleeves did not help me think of anything better. All I was left with was a keen sense that I did not belong, that I was trespassing on something that distinctly did not belong to me. 

My thoughts filled with Anastasia, all I could think of was to beg my brother for peace. 

“Please don’t hate me.”


	8. LUVANDER

LUVANDER

Before joining the Airmen, I might have felt sorry for Balfour or been tempted to take him under my wing after Amery’s death. I had never wished Amery any ill, but I took Anastasia’s new selection as less of a personal insult than the others did. No matter how sentient she might be, she was still mechanical:  a construct like all of our girls, even my dear Yesfir. We might be so attached as to fool ourselves into thinking they could not live without us and we without them. But even people usually survive grief to love again—and we don’t have hearts made of cogs and gears and magic.

Even from observing him at the funeral, I had no idea how Balfour felt about his brother’s death. Though he had an ostensibly open and emotive face, he revealed surprisingly little. Not unlike myself. If he was smart, he would cultivate that further. It might be the only way he would survive what was waiting for him at the Airman.

A storm had been brewing in our building since Amery’s loss, a real squall of a thing unlike the occasional twister or temper tantrum that got batted around between us. Poor Balfour, the misguided and unwary sweet thing, was going to end up at the center of it without ever being aware that he hadn’t done anything wrong, that his only crime was to be chosen as Amery’s successor.

He arrived the next morning when the sun had burned off the mist lingering from the previous day. No longer so chilling, the air had taken on a weak warmth, the promise of the burgeoning Volstovic spring. While not a disgustingly early riser, I had already been up for a time by when the others got up:  it was a habit I’d learned during my time there, out of a desire not to share my breakfast with three or four other mouths. These men had little to no concept of how not to steal things from one another. But at least Niall, who was already in the kitchen when I got there, would not be taking my food. He was cooking his own, the smell of eggs and bacon sizzling in the skillet providing a sort of soft percussion for his singing.

Niall and I were eating breakfast and reading the broadsheets when Magoughin poked his head into the kitchen. His straw-blond hair wasn’t properly combed, and his faintly bleary look made it clear that he’d just woken up. But there was a mischievous look in his eye that had me hurriedly wolfing down what was left of my bacon and toast. Either he was planning on stealing our hard-earned meal, or something vastly more interesting was about to happen that I wouldn’t want to miss.

Poor Niall was absorbed in the broadsheets, no doubt poring over the reviews of some play or other that had premiered in the Amazement. And with his back to the door, he had given Magoughin the element of surprise.

“Hey!” But too late, his plate of half-eaten breakfast had been snatched up in Magoughin’s huge hand. Niall glared with a half-hearted comment of “Make your own damned food,” but relinquished his fork without a fight. Magoughin just grinned.

After a few bites of scrambled egg, Magoughin paused long enough to tell us what he knew. “Ran into Adamo on my way here. I guess Amery’s little brother is going to be here soon.”

“Charming.” Folding the newspaper, Niall smoothed it under his fingers. “I suppose our Chief Sergeant wants us to come meet him officially and make nice?”

In answer, Magoughin just shrugged. “I don’t think there’s anything fancy or official. But I’m kinda curious to meet him. Aren’t you?”

“I am,” I said. After depositing my dish in the sink, I turned back to the other two with a smile. “He’s new. And that will make him exciting. At least until the novelty wears off.”

Niall still didn’t look convinced. He hadn’t seemed as offended at Anastasia’s choice, but perhaps I had misjudged him. Melodrama wouldn’t be an unusual response from him, considering past interactions and his love of the theater. But it was tiring and dull. If he was going to persist in that, then it would be no great loss to leave him behind while Magoughin and I went and did something interesting.

Though when it came down to it, Niall followed us out of the kitchen all the same.

Much to his credit, Balfour arrived at a perfectly respectable time that even our dear Chief Sergeant couldn’t complain about. He showed up in a carriage, but the livery on it immediately marked him as an outsider. None of the rest of us would have done so, precisely because we didn’t come from families as wealthy or self-important as Amery and Balfour’s.

Poor, silly boy. He had no idea what lay in store for him.

At least my curiosity was relatively innocent. Rook, Compagnon, and Ace at the very least had trouble in mind for young Balfour Vallet.

He looked young and sickly pale and very small. Not short or even particularly tiny, I think how diminutive he looked had more to do with how he carried himself. Most of us had been younger when we came here, but the strength of the other airmen’s personalities filled up the space our bodies had eventually grown into:  like we’d been jockeying for space even before we had the physicality to need it. Balfour, on the other hand, looked as though he had spent most of his life either trying to blend into the background or hide his height. Of course, he wasn’t as tall as Ghislain or Magoughin or Compagnon, but Amery and Balfour were from the same stock. I would have been more surprised if he’d been short. As it was, he didn’t have Amery’s presence or bulk—all gangly limbs and narrow shoulders.

We were all sort of jostling at the door, trying to find a good vantage point while remaining under the narrow overhang that would shield us from the miserably cold rain. Adamo eyed us with an expression that clearly forbade any kind of troublemaking. Magoughin was doing his best impression of innocence, and Niall had his arms crossed over his chest like the current events didn’t interest or affect him at all. I gave Adamo my brightest smile, but it did not seem to reassure him any.

The Chief Sergeant stepped forward while the rest of us hung back by the doors. Balfour had retrieved what appeared to be a suitcase by that time. A murmured conversation with the carriage driver, and the man was paid. He clicked his tongue to his horses and pulled away from the Airman.

“Morning.” Adamo’s voice sounded gruff—but then again, it always did.

Balfour glanced at us nervously before looking back to the Sergeant. It made me like him more that he was carrying his own trunk up the stairs himself. “Good morning, sir.”

“I’ll show you to your room and parts of the Airman. Then we’ll talk about rules and your training schedule.” Always one to get to the point, our Adamo. He jerked his head back toward us. “These three are Magoughin, Luvander, and Niall. You’ll meet the rest of the boys later. Outside of training and raids, mostly everyone keeps to their own schedules. I wouldn’t be surprised if no one else is up yet.”

“Yes, sir.” Such a soft-spoken thing, for an airman. He smiled at us hesitantly, his hope that we would approve of him quite obvious on his face. “It’s nice to meet you. Officially.” The last word was added awkwardly.

Adamo motioned for him to step into the Airman, dismissing us with the rough order of, “Go do something useful with yourselves. Don’t need you tagging along gawking like a bunch of ‘Versity first years.” And while in that moment nothing would have pleased me more than to trail along behind them, I could tell by the tone in his voice that this was a command to be obeyed. Besides, I was already sure that things would very soon get quite interesting in our common room as soon as the others woke up and realized that Amery’s brother was here now, for better or for worse.

I smiled and waved as Balfour left to follow Adamo, but for the moment that was all I would allow myself by way of kindness. Seeming too sympathetic to him would just make me a target too, and I had no desire to go through the airmen’s informal hazing a second time.

We would see what would happen in a week or so, and then a month—if our newest comrade would sink or swim.


End file.
